Chapter 3 - THE BROTHER THEY BURIED WITHOUT A BODY
"Matteo is alive."
Dante spoke the words so quietly that Elena almost missed them.
Then he placed both hands on the back of a chair and looked at her.
"Tell me I'm wrong."
Elena sat motionless on the couch.
Sophie had finally fallen asleep under a wool blanket, one hand resting on Bruno's enormous head.
The dog had not moved in twenty minutes.
Dante had sent Carmine to stand guard outside.
He had also ordered every employee working the overnight shift to remain inside the estate until their movements could be verified.
Now only one question mattered.
"Is my brother alive?"
Elena wiped her cheeks.
"I don't know."
"Your daughter says she saw him."
"She says she heard him."
"She recognized his photograph."
"Because I showed it to her."
Dante stared at Elena.
"Then tell me the truth."
She looked at Sophie.
"Please. Not here."
Dante led her into the adjoining library, leaving the door open so they could see the sleeping child.
For a long moment, Elena stood beside the fireplace.
Then she began.
"I met Matteo six years ago."
Dante's jaw tightened.
"He never mentioned you."
"He wasn't supposed to."
"Why?"
"Because your family didn't approve of women like me."
Dante opened his mouth, then stopped.
Elena gave a bitter little smile.
"I was working nights at a hospital laundry service in Brooklyn. Matteo came in with a friend who had been injured. He stayed to make sure the man got treatment."
"Matteo had plenty of doctors."
"I told him that."
For the first time, Elena almost smiled.
"He said he liked meeting someone who wasn't afraid to tell him he was being ridiculous."
Dante remembered his younger brother.
Restless.
Stubborn.
Always laughing at the wrong moment.
Matteo had been the only person in the family who occasionally told Dante he was becoming too much like their father.
"Did you marry him?" Dante asked.
Elena shook her head.
"We planned to."
Her voice broke.
"Then I became pregnant."
Dante closed his eyes.
Five years.
Five years of birthdays missed.
Five Christmas mornings.
Five years during which a little girl had lived beneath his roof while he remained a stranger to her.
"Why didn't he tell me?"
"He wanted to."
"What stopped him?"
"Something he found in the company's shipping records."
Dante opened his eyes.
Elena continued.
"Matteo said someone was using the Moretti warehouses for illegal shipments that weren't recorded in the company accounts. He believed the operation was bigger than anything your father had ever run."
Dante's expression hardened.
"The warehouses were my responsibility."
"I know."
"Then he should have come to me."
"He tried."
Elena hesitated.
"Someone warned him that you were involved."
Dante went still.
"Who?"
"He never told me."
Outside the room, Bruno lifted his head.
Elena continued, her voice trembling.
"Matteo believed someone was moving weapons through Pier Nine and diverting millions into private accounts. He found documents tying those shipments to a charity foundation."
"The Moretti Foundation?"
She nodded.
Dante felt a sickening anger rise.
The foundation funded children's hospitals, food banks, and housing programs.
His mother had built it.
His uncle Vittorio managed much of its financial administration.
"He wanted to expose them," Elena whispered.
"And then Pier Nine burned."
"Yes."
Dante remembered the fire.
The orange sky.
The explosion heard four blocks away.
The investigators who found Matteo's watch beneath collapsed steel.
No body.
Only a burned vehicle and enough evidence to declare him dead.
Dante had accepted the conclusion because the alternative was unbearable.
His brother had betrayed him.
Or his brother had died trying to prove Dante was innocent.
"Elena, what happened after the fire?"
She folded her hands tightly.
"Three months later, someone left an envelope outside my apartment."
"What was inside?"
"Money. Enough to pay my rent for a year."
"From whom?"
"No name."
She swallowed.
"But there was a note."
Dante waited.
"It said, 'Keep our little star safe.'"
Dante glanced toward the sitting room.
Sophie's star pillow.
"Matteo used to call her that," Elena said. "Even before she was born."
"Did you recognize the handwriting?"
"Yes."
"Then he survived."
"For at least three months."
"Why didn't you contact me?"
Elena looked directly at him.
"Because a man came to my apartment the same evening."
"Who?"
"He told me that if Dante Moretti ever learned about the baby, both of us would disappear."
Dante's fingers curled against the chair.
"Describe him."
"Gray hair. Expensive coat. Gold ring."
"A lion?"
Elena began to cry again.
Dante turned away.
Vittorio.
His uncle.
The man he had trusted with his finances, his foundation, and the keys to his home.
"Why did my mother bring you here?"
"She found me after someone tried to take Sophie from her daycare."
Dante turned back.
"What?"
"She was two. A man came claiming to be her grandfather. The teacher refused to release her."
Elena pressed her hand to her chest.
"Your mother arrived that night. She told me she knew whose daughter Sophie was."
"And she brought you here?"
"She said it was the one place nobody would think to look."
Dante stared at her.
His own mother had hidden Matteo's daughter inside his house.
For three years.
Because she believed he couldn't be trusted with the truth.
Or because she knew someone close to him would kill to keep it buried.
At 3:06 a.m., Carmine knocked on the library door.
"We found something."
Dante stepped into the corridor.
Carmine handed him a tablet.
"I recovered part of the deleted footage from a backup drive. Whoever altered the system didn't know we keep independent copies."
Dante watched.
The screen showed the servants' hallway at 1:09 a.m.
A shadow moved near Sophie's door.
Then a man appeared.
Tall.
Wearing a dark coat.
He kept his face turned away from the camera.
But his left hand pressed against the wall as though he were struggling to remain upright.
There was blood on his sleeve.
Dante leaned closer.
The man tapped Sophie's door.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then he bent toward it.
His mouth moved.
The camera had no audio.
Suddenly, he looked toward the end of the hallway.
Another figure had appeared.
This second man wore a security uniform.
The injured stranger slipped behind a narrow section of wood paneling.
Seconds later, the security guard reached Sophie's door.
He stopped.
Looked around.
Then followed the first man through the wall.
The recording ended.
"That's impossible," Dante said.
Carmine shook his head.
"There's an old service passage behind that hallway. It was sealed before I started working here."
"Who reopened it?"
"I don't know."
"Who's the guard?"
Carmine zoomed in.
His expression darkened.
"Rocco."
Dante knew him.
Rocco Bellini had worked at the estate for seven years.
A former soldier.
Quiet.
Reliable.
Personally recommended by Vittorio.
"Find him," Dante ordered.
Carmine shook his head.
"That's the second problem."
"What second problem?"
"Rocco left the estate at 1:21 using a delivery vehicle."
"Without permission?"
"His access card was approved."
"By whom?"
Carmine turned the tablet.
A name appeared beneath the electronic authorization.
VITTORIO MORETTI.
Dante stared at it.
The room seemed suddenly very cold.
"Lock down the property," he said.
Carmine hesitated.
"Boss, your uncle is hosting a foundation gala tomorrow night. We have almost two hundred guests arriving."
"Then tell him security is being upgraded."
"He'll ask why."
Dante's voice hardened.
"Let him."
Just before dawn, Sophie woke asking for hot chocolate.
Dante made it himself.
Or tried to.
He found the cocoa powder, put too much into the saucepan, burned the milk, and stared at the result as though it were an enemy refusing to surrender.
Sophie watched from a kitchen stool.
"That's not how Mama does it."
"I gathered that."
"You need more milk."
Dante added some.
"Not that much."
He looked at her.
"Are you always this demanding?"
She considered the question.
"Only when I'm helping."
Despite everything, Dante laughed.
The sound surprised him.
It surprised Elena, too, when she entered and found the feared head of the Moretti family standing in his kitchen wearing an apron that read Kiss the Cook.
For half a minute, the house felt almost normal.
Sophie drank the hot chocolate.
Bruno sat beside her stool.
Then she reached into her pocket.
"Mr. Dante?"
"Yes?"
"The man gave me something."
Dante went still.
"What man?"
"The knocking man."
Elena hurried forward.
"Sophie, when?"
"Yesterday. In the garden. Before it rained."
She held out a small brass whistle attached to a worn leather cord.
Dante stared.
He knew that whistle.
He had given it to Matteo on his nineteenth birthday.
Matteo had used it to train Bruno.
No one else knew the particular sequence of notes that could summon the dog instantly.
"Did the man say anything?" Dante asked.
Sophie nodded.
"He said if somebody tried to take me away, I should blow it."
Dante took the whistle.
Its surface was scratched.
Near the mouthpiece, two letters were carved into the brass.
M.M.
His brother's initials.
Dante looked toward Bruno.
The dog's ears were already standing.
He raised the whistle and blew two short notes followed by one long one.
Bruno reacted instantly.
He rushed across the kitchen and stood against Dante's legs, tail trembling.
Then he began whining.
Elena covered her mouth.
Dante knelt and wrapped one arm around the enormous dog.
For five years, he had believed Matteo was dead.
Now his brother's dog was responding to a command nobody had used since the fire.
"Where did the man go, Sophie?"
"Toward the old greenhouse."
"Was he hurt?"
She nodded.
"He had red on his shirt."
"Did he tell you his name?"
"Not his real name."
Dante frowned.
"What did he say?"
Sophie looked at Elena.
Then she whispered, "He said he was the man who used to sing to me when I was a baby."
Elena began sobbing.
Dante reached for her hand.
For the first time, she allowed him to hold it.
"We'll find him," he promised.
But before he could say anything else, Carmine entered through the kitchen door.
His expression stopped Dante's next breath.
"Boss. We have a problem."
"What happened?"
"Your uncle's people just delivered the guest list for tonight's gala."
"And?"
Carmine held out the final page.
"There's a name on it that wasn't there yesterday."
Dante read it.
MATTEO MORETTI.
Under the name was a handwritten instruction.
Private guest. Arrival through the east service entrance. No security screening.
Dante looked up.
Carmine swallowed.
"Your uncle is bringing your supposedly dead brother to the gala."
May you like
He paused.
"And according to the security order, nobody is supposed to let him leave alive."
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